


The Revolutionary and His Cynic

by downtheroadandupthehill



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-08
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-24 04:37:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/630502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downtheroadandupthehill/pseuds/downtheroadandupthehill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire loves Enjolras. Enjolras loves France. Unconnected drabbles ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Night Before

“Patria is a cold, hard mistress,” Grantaire mumbles, and presses a kiss to his leader’s bare shoulder. For that was who Enjolras was—his leader—not his lover or even his friend. “She’s made you cold and hard, too.” The hands splayed across Grantaire’s back are as rigid as marble, and a swipe of tongue across collarbone, followed by a graze of teeth, fails to warm them.

“How much have you had to drink?” Enjolras shifts beneath the larger man, tries to press himself closer to him. He twists a leg around Grantaire’s calf, tries to make himself looser, more malleable, as if the barricade does not rise tomorrow and every fiber of his being is not taut with the tension of it all.

“Not enough for this.” Grantaire scowls and softly bites Enjolras’s nipple, listening appreciatively to a muffled gasp.

“Tomorrow.” Enjolras pauses, arches his back as Grantaire struggles to pull his trousers off, drops them to the floor. “You should not be at the barricade.”

“I’ll need another bottle or two of wine for this conversation.” He takes his leader’s cock into his hand, looks up into his face. In the candlelight, he watches Enjolras’s close in half-fulfilled pleasure. “I know where I belong. Enough of this.”

Long fingers curl into Grantaire’s hair, tugging him right where Enjolras wants him most. His hot breath, lips and tongue and wet throat so close, teases, and Enjolras tugs again. “Please,” he says, and isn’t sure quite what he’s asking for.

Grantaire would like to taunt, make him beg for it—please suck my cock, Grantaire first heard a month or so ago—but the barricade is too close, too soon, and talking is dangerous. He feels his cowardice in his breast—the last thing he needs is Enjolras to grab hold, draw it out like blood and make him flee. No, he will live and die as the barricade rises and falls, he’s already vowed. A martyr to a cause he’s never believed in. But he believes in this—the man beneath him, heavy breathing and sweat across his brow. This curly-haired god, who deigns to beg for simple favors.

No, Grantaire knows where he belongs tomorrow, and for now he basks in his leader’s fingernails digging into his scalp as he takes him roughly into his mouth.


	2. Home

Enjolras slings Grantaire’s arm around his shoulders, heaves the heavier man upright. For the better part of an hour, Grantaire has been slumped in his seat, his snoring interrupted only by his intermittent mumbled curses. But even the Musain must close for a few hours each night, and Grantaire, unresponsive to the prods and shakes from his friends, proves himself unable to leave the premises on his own, and it’s Enjolras’s turn to take him home. Even a leader of revolutions must be subject to the whims of a drunkard, on occasion.

“Up with you, Grantaire,” Enjolras mutters. He nods at Courfeyrac, who holds the door open for the men as they leave. Courfeyrac merely grins and nods back.

“I need more wine,” Grantaire says, as he realizes he’s being dragged into the street. Enjolras has learned to stop being shocked at his ability in coherence, even as Grantaire is this deep in his inebriation. “Enjolras.”

“We are going home,” he says, and tries to use a tone more suited in direction to an unruly child. But Enjolras has never learned even that degree of sensitivity, and his words have bite. Grantaire is silenced, for the moment, though he hastens to cooperate and takes some of his weight off of Enjolras’s shoulders. He can stumble along of his own accord, with Enjolras at his arm to guide him. 

Through a door, and up four flights of winding, creaky stairs. Enjolras has Grantaire’s key—he’d took it from him after Grantaire ordered his third bottle of wine for the night—and together they crowd into the tiny room. It smells of wine and absinthe and dust, much like Grantaire himself. Familiar, not pleasant, but not quite unpleasant, either.

Grantaire collapses onto his bed, rubs his eyes. Enjolras kneels beside him and pulls at the laces of his boots and starts to take them off.

“Enjolras,” Grantaire breathes. “Enjolras.” He says the name with reverence, so utterly unlike the cynic, the doubter, that Enjolras has come to know too well.

“Grantaire?”

He opens his mouth to answer, then stops, his bloodshot gaze like iron against Enjolras’s flesh. Grantaire looks as if he is about to weep—and he is, for the blood of martyr’s, he fears, does not flow through him as it ought to. Not even enough courage for these few words, and a few words is all it would take.

But Enjolras has his revolution to claim him, and Grantaire—even if he were sober and passionate, and even if he still painted, instead of spending all his days at the bottle—could never compare. They both know it, but tonight Grantaire’s despair is too heavy to be borne alone, and they both know that, too.

Enjolras loves his revolution, but there’s a corner of his heart—the part of him that is simply Enjolras, and not Apollo, nor Orestes—that loves Grantaire, as well. 

Once he has conquered Grantaire’s boots, he stands and whispers. “Move over.” Tosses his jacket to the floor, and curls against his lover’s side.


	3. A Dream

They had a picnic in the park. Complete with a blanket and a basket, full of bread and apples--and only one bottle of wine. Grantaire didn’t need so much wine anymore, with Enjolras at his side. 

Dinner in a cafe. Like two friends, although when the waiter was not present, Enjolras hooked his ankle around Grantaire’s leg, and smirked at him across the table. Grantaire felt himself grow hard--and they both hurried to finish their meals after that, as Enjolras chewed on his bottom lip with anticipation. Even Apollo had a few bad habits.

There was no revolution--they lived in a France that was already free. No widowed mothers wept on the streets, and Grantaire painted every day. He loved to paint his lover most of all, complete with every mouth-sized bruise Grantaire had time to leave, in shades of grey and violet. Yellows and golds, of course, for his hair. He used up far too much paint in these colors, trying to get it just right, although Enjolras kissed him a dozen times and more for every effort made.

When it snowed they stayed in bed all day. Made love, and when they needed time to recuperate, Enjolras read aloud Beaumarchais to him, even though Enjolras preferred Rousseau and Voltaire.

And then the silence that falls is worse than the plotting and the gunshots and the screaming. Grantaire wakes, reeking of wine and sweat that soaks his shirt. There are footsteps and mutters upstairs, and he feels himself drawn to them. There is blood on the stairs as he mounts them, he notices.

In the corner of the room, near the window, stands his once-upon-a-time-lover, and leader. The sun has risen, but Grantaire does not remember that. He pushes past the horde of men that surround the corner, and oddly, they allow him to pass. Enjolras appears as stern and haughty as ever, chin raised high, eyes like ice. Grantaire wishes he could paint the moment--if only there were time.

“Long live the Republic!” he calls out, without any of his usual mockery and scorn, though none of his old friends echo the familiar refrain. He offers Enjolras a smile, and for once, Enjolras returns it, as he grasps Grantaire’s hand.

Together, they face the storm, as if that was how it was meant to be.


	4. Lonely Souls

“ _Who cares about your lonely soul_?” Grantaire scoffs. “Poor Marius, facing your wrath over a girl. Not all of us are statues born from the womb of France herself, you know. It turns out Marius may be capable of loving someone besides Liberty and her vengeful lover.”

The statue himself, Liberty’s vengeful lover, finds himself too occupied to bother with a reply. Tangled in a mess of sweaty sheets on the wooden floor--they’ve gotten a splinter or two, in the past, other times when the bed creaks in its unhappy fragility beneath the weight of two nearly-grown men--trailing kisses down Grantaire’s spine.

Grantaire continues. “And you’re more affectionate than usual, aren’t you? Marius the romantic, did he get you a little worked up? Normally you would’ve made me leave by now, kicked the drunkard to the streets, after using him like a whore.” He adds bitterly, “Though whores get paid, at least.”

Enjolras nudges Grantaire to make him roll over onto his back, braces his elbows on either side of Grantaire’s shoulders as he hovers over him, face to face. “You’ve never been discontented with our arrangement before now.”

Grantaire averts his eyes, as if the wall beside them has suddenly become fascinating. It’s preferable to meeting his lover’s--if he could even call him that, for mustn’t love be returned in order to earn the use of that intimate title--his lover’s searching stare. He shakes his head, tries to stagger upright from the bedclothes webbed around his legs, until Enjolras pulls him back to the floor and he can’t help but stay there with the obvious invitation to, stretched out by Enjolras’s side and not quite unwanted, this once.

A sigh, and Enjolras rests his chin on Grantaire’s arm. “Are you afraid?”

He can’t find it in him to push him off. “Afraid of what? Drinking myself to death after the revolution no matter the outcome? No, I would’ve died like that regardless.” And then the cynic dissipates, and Grantaire pauses for a moment. “Are you?”

Enjolras weaves his fingers through Grantaire’s curls with familiarity, and a touch of fondness that he cannot seem to hide. “Tomorrow I do what I was born to do.” And they both pretend that is a suitable answer to the question posed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With all the pre-death, pre-barricade angst I can't seem to stop writing, if anyone wants to shoot me a fluffy-type prompt, feel free!


	5. Heavan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by tyche88 on tumblr, who wanted an afterlife fic.

Grantaire wasn’t sure what heaven was supposed to look like. But now that he’s here, he sees it not all angels with harps and fluffy white clouds. Instead, it looks like the Cafe Musain, except all of the colors are a little brighter, and the floor isn’t covered in soldiers’ bloody footprints like he remembers. He’s not bleeding anymore, and his clothes are not riddled with bullet holes. There’s no more pain, and he supposes that he likes that, even though he could use a drink or two regardless. He wonders briefly if there’s wine in heaven, until there’s a tug on his hand.

Oh, that’s right.

Enjolras is here, still holding Grantaire’s hand. The last thing Grantaire expects is for Enjolras to be smiling, but he is, and it’s beatific. Their fingers are entwined, and Grantaire smiles back.

“You shouldn’t have done it.”

“ _I told you I believed in you_ ,” Grantaire whispers against Enjolras lips, as Enjolras draws him against his chest in a tight embrace, and the pressing matter of acquiring wine suddenly doesn’t matter anymore. Enjolras is here, and Grantaire at his side, right where he belongs.


	6. Surprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by zed-p-m on tumblr: E sees R playing the piano and is blown away.

The Café Musain was always nearly empty around this time in the morning—students were usually in class, and everyone else was at their work, to keep bread on their tables and a roof over their heads. Enjolras likes the rare quiet, in the room upstairs, finds it the perfect place to study, better than his cramped room or the overcrowded library. He finds some small solace in his schoolwork, a break from all his thoughts and plans of toppling tyrants and revolution, which have the ability to exhaust even him, sometimes.

Then the piano starts, downstairs.

At first, Enjolras feels a twinge of annoyance, that someone has decided to interrupt his few hours of peace, but the sound of the piano is nice, at least, without the typical clamor of whoever plays it in the rowdy evenings. The player this morning seems familiar with the touch of the keys, though, and it’s surprisingly pleasant on Enjolras’s ears, even if it’s also an unwelcome distraction from the history is meant to be reading.

After he finishes the current passage, Enjolras shuts the book, gathers the rest of them under his arm, ready to go in pursuit of another café—even if it’s one he likes less than the Café Musain—where he might improve his focus. He goes downstairs, leaves a coin on the countertop for the coffee he had nursed for the past two hours, and turns toward the piano, another coin in hand for its player. As much as the lovely music is driving Enjolras away, he also recognizes the rarity of lovely music in their world, when people are oftentimes too desperate and poor to rely on the arts for an income.

He stops abruptly, however, as he recognizes the familiar face of the man behind the piano.

Grantaire hasn’t noticed him yet. His eyes belong to the dusty keys and his hands upon them, and he’s biting down hard on his lower lip in concentration. There’s no music in front of him. Enjolras thinks he has never seen his friend so passionate before—but of course he’s wrong about that, if only he saw it when Grantaire’s eyes were on him.

And then they are, and Grantaire halts his playing with an ugly note. An uncomfortable smile frames his reddening face. “Ap—p—ollo,” he stutters out, using his silly nickname for Enjolras without thinking.

“I didn’t know you played any instruments.” He walks around the piano until he’s at Grantaire’s side, and glances at his long fingers, splayed across the keys. There’s paint in his fingernails, but that’s normal.

“It’s not of any use to your revolution,” Grantaire says quietly, and he lets his gaze fall toward the floor. His Apollo, so close to him, and he feels himself begin to sweat.

“Nonetheless, you play very well. You are not as useless as you try to make yourself appear, Grantaire.” Enjolras clasps his shoulder before heading out into the street.

For a few moments, Grantaire grins dumbly around the almost-empty café, before he resumes playing.


	7. His Disdain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by strawhats-and-denimjackets: Grantaire's first drink.

He’d been young once, and sober, too. He’s still young, or so his friends tell him, even if he doesn’t feel it anymore. He’s nothing without a bottle in his hand, and wine in his belly—or those things make him nothing—he can’t be sure. Grantaire can grin and boast and quip and drink, but that’s all he’s good for, he is certain of that.

He thinks he can pinpoint when everything changed. As a teenager, he’d indulged in a cup of wine every now and then with his friends, and his eyes glittered with the hope they all shared, the hope of a better life, a better future. Enjolras still smiled at him, back in those days. All of their friends home for the night, and Enjolras had smiled sweetly against Grantaire’s mouth, each of them sober enough for this. Teeth scraped along the nape of his neck, hands snagged hard into his hair. The table is hard but what’s raw is also tender, and Grantaire thinks that is what makes them beautiful.

The next evening, another private kiss, and this one not returned. Grantaire drinks in earnest, then.


End file.
